Unusual homes/gardens almost

After purchasing a parcel of land in Todos Santos, Mexico, Greg Armas and Gabriela Minguez set out to design a 3-bed, 2-bathroom home. The resulting indoor/outdoor space is 1,900 square feet—with almost half of that occupied by open-air hallways and patios.

Before: Much of the existing home dated to the 1980s, which explains postmodern flourishes like the arching entryway.

Each of the three massive adobe volumes that Rael printed on property in 2020 open to the sky and, with no foundation, connect directly to the earth. Titled Casa Covida, the project combined new approaches with ancient, Indigenous traditions to reimagine co-habitation and connection in the midst of a global pandemic.

The Nubian vaults championed by legendary earth-building architect Hassan Fathy became a fertile source of inspiration for Rael in the nineties. He sought out one of the Egyptian’s students and foremost stateside practitioners, Simone Swan, who was constructing a home with a team of volunteers on the border of West Texas and Mexico. From those practical seeds, the road to Terrano—the world’s first ever construction with a roof 3-D printed in situ—was paved. “Building upon the genius of the past,” Rael once wrote, “is one small step towards a larger goal of producing architectural elegance using humankind’s most humble material.”